Looking at Melissa Arnot you wouldn't guess that this slight, unassuming 5'3" 115 pounds women had such incredible physical strength. You wouldn't guess that she's summited Mount Rainier 103 times, that she's scaled Everest five times (she is the women's world record holder for summits of the world's highest peak) from both the north and south sides, that she throws a 65-pound pack on her back for the daily climb up Bald Mountain (a 3400 ft. vertical elevation near her home in Idaho) to start her five hours of training. And in all that, you'd be wrong. She defines badass better than any Liam Neeson meme could ever hope to.

But when we met up with Melissa in early spring (fittingly on the top of the Hearst Tower), she carried herself with quiet confidence and without the pomp that you might expect from someone who has accomplished so much. She's there to talk about her next trip up Everest, and from the windows overlooking Central Park, she discusses her plans to summit the intimidating peak two more times (for a total of seven), and as an added challenge, that she and her climbing partner had planned to climb without supplemental oxygen or a support staff.

Weeks later, Everest tragically proved her words true. On April 18th, the mountain experienced its single deadliest day in its history, when an avalanche claimed the lives of 16 Nepalese climbing guides. The climbing season came to an abrupt end when the guides effectively walked off the mountain and refused to lead any more treks until their demands for increased workers' rights and protections are met.

Melissa and her partner wouldn't have the opportunity to summit. Arnot has spent half her life scaling some of the world's highest peaks. It is what defines her and what she loves doing most and this visit to Everest was going to be a huge and potentially record-breaking moment. In an instant, the opportunity vanished. We reconnected with Arnot to see what happened when a climber can't climb, and when tragedy takes away the change to attempt something you've worked so hard to do.

That whole idea of rolling with what's happening and not trying to oppose it so much is what I've been trying to practice. I kept trying to make things work, but just couldn't get them going…so I came home from Nepal and decided I needed some structured physical activity and I just rode my road bike solo from Yellowstone to Glacial National Park and then back around. It was a 700 mile trip.

What was funny about it is that it didn't seem like enough.

I challenge myself to a really high physical level and anything underneath that just feels lazy. I don't know if I do well when I try to just "freestyle". So, the bike ride at least gave me an outlet.

Everest was more challenging than I'd ever expected. I knew it would be hard, but I had a friend (another guide), who had really diminished it to me before I went the first time. When I got there, I was strong enough to climb, but being "strong enough" was not good enough. I was the weakest of the group and so every time after that, I trained excessively to be the strongest I could possibly be and to have the best endurance I could possibly have.

I trained like crazy before this year's climb (four to five hours of strength and endurance training and yoga several times a week) and also added in something a little bit unusual, which was that I trained for a marathon simultaneously. I ran it right before leaving for Nepal.

This illusion of control that we have in our every day lives is thrust in your face when you climb Everest, because you can pretend you're in charge of what's going to happen, but you're constantly reminded that you are one very small portion of this huge equation. So many things have to come together for you to be able to climb, and as a climber, you're really barely in control of most of it.

I think it would have been incredibly helpful for a lot of people's healing process to have climbed after this accident happened. The accident was just an accident. No one did anything wrong, it's just that something that we all know can happen happened and I think it was really detrimental to the place that no one climbed after that, because it sort of leaves everyone stuck in that day. I totally sympathize with the workers. They definitely had a reason to demand better protection and it's something I've been lobbying for for years, but at the same time, you really shoot yourself in the foot as an industry by stopping the whole season. There were hundreds of people who had permits, and who lost all their money (in some cases up to $90k) they'd raised…and, yes, it's not about the money, but a lot of those people will never have the opportunity to come back. The season didn't end because the mountain was too dangerous. This is just a huge political fight and one that I do think needed to happen, but it is something that could have been dealt with without ending the season.

I'm going back to Nepal in the Fall to start delivering the funds The Juniper Fund (a non-profit I started) has been raising for the families of workers who were killed on Everest (and various other peaks). It will be a long process, but we're starting on it and committed to seeing it through.

One of the most tragic things that people do in the face of extreme sadness or adversity is just to throw their hands up and say, "Ok, I'm done!" or "This has nothing to do with me," but this does have something to do with me and I do have a bit of a voice over there and I can hopefully continue to help shape something that's a positive place for people to be and travel…and to be a sustainably positive place.

The joy thatyou get from reaching the summit is a tiny, tiny part…it's ten minutes to an hour of a 65 day expedition and if you don't enjoy some of the work and the difficulty of those other days, what's the point?

Most of our lives are pretty uncomfortable. Most of the time, you're not in the perfect zen state, so if you can appreciate the process and the moments when things are not comfortable and not going the way you planned, you're life will pretty much always be filled with some level of joy.